


Smoke and Mirrors

by rufeepeach



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Magician AU, magician/assistant au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-22
Updated: 2013-07-22
Packaged: 2017-12-21 01:40:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/894295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rufeepeach/pseuds/rufeepeach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mr Gold first found Belle French performing her magic act on the streets of London. Now, three years later, Dark Castle Tales is a hit magic show, telling the stories of the sorcerer Rumpelstiltskin and his assistant, Miss Belle. Magician!AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and Mirrors

**Author's Note:**

> So the darling wonderwoundedhearers on Tumblr engaged a smut war, and I couldn't help but fire back :)

Rumpelstiltskin’s make-up took forever to remove.

The transformation, from Rumpelstiltskin, the impish magician who took to the stage every other night and conjured a whole new world, to the sober and entirely ordinary Elias Gold was a lengthy one. And, as his only trusted assistant, it was Belle’s task to help him.

And it took forever.

“Why do you even do this?” she asked, frustrated, the hundredth night she had scrubbed the green and gold mottling from his face. She had put it in place hours before, after she’d applied her own simple make-up of red lipstick and dark eyeliner, and now she cursed her own talent, the paint stubborn and fixed to his right cheekbone, “Why the extra effort?”

“What do you mean, dear?” he asked, as she scrubbed at a hard little chunk of paste, designed to give his skin an almost scaled effect.

“The paint, the scales, the leather…” she trailed off: she rather liked the leather, actually. For a man in his mid forties, Elias Gold knew how to fill a pair of leather trousers. Not that she snuck a peek, every now and then. That would be unprofessional in the extreme. “I mean, Jefferson works the same circuit, and he gets by on a top hat and tails.”

“Exactly,” Gold said, with a small smile, “and why would anyone choose our show and not his? Something has to tip the scales, and his little disappearing act is a little old hat.”

He chuckled at his own pun, and she groaned, rolling her eyes. “You had to.”

“Every time, love,” he said, smiling widely, and she whaked his shoulder for creasing his cheeks and spreading the make up further. 

“Alright, but did you have to make it so damn difficult to get off?”

He looked at her, a little strangely, and for a moment their eyes met for longer than usual. Then he shrugged, looked away, “Is it such a chore?”

“It’s difficult as anything,” Belle muttered, “and I suppose not comfortable for you either. This stuff’s almost as strong as terps, you know.”

“It’s as comfortable as I get,” he said, softly, and she almost didn’t catch the wistful little note in his voice.

Then she got the last smudge on his cheek, and Ruby, their stage manager, called her from another room to help with the packing up of the more specialised equipment, and the moment was gone as quickly as it had come.

—

Gold watched his assistant leave, and sighed, slumping back in his chair.

He’d first found Belle busking in London, performing street magic on a corner in Covent Garden. She’d dressed herself in a long blue dress, like a peasant maiden at a Renaissance Faire, and all her tricks were performed with a certain otherworldly performance, he supposed designed to give variety to her act.

She was very good, and he came back three days in a row to stand in the shadows of the marketplace, coffee in hand, and watch her perform. It gave life to her, he saw: the quiet, reserved young woman who set up the act transformed into a vibrant enchantress the moment she had her audience, the moment her equipment began to dance in her nimble hands.

He was already well-established, then, but since his son had gone to University he’d not had anyone with him on-stage. Bae wanted to be a dancer, the performance in his blood craving a more physical magic than the tricks his father was famous for. He didn’t call as much as Gold would like, but then every day wouldn’t have been enough, if he had his way.

He’d not been looking for an assistant. But he caught Belle’s eye and smiled, and here they were.

Her blue dress had been updated a little, cut a little lower and edged with a silvery white blouse. She played the clever maid, the sorcerer’s apprentice, the common sense straight man who rolled her eyes, as he pantomimed and made jokes to the audience, and flirted with her shamelessly. All part of the act, of course: the audience responded well to it, and Belle had never given any indication that he should back off. She even blushed and giggled and joined in, which of course was what made the whole thing work.

He never had the nerve to do any of it, once the make-up came off. He’d always done that, made a clear demarkation between Rumpelstiltskin, the dramatic demon who conjured flames and turned men into bouquets of roses on stage, and Mr Gold, who left the theatre after the show.

Rumpelstiltskin was able to dance and flirt and make Belle blush and laugh, and kiss his cheek when he gave her the rose at the end of the act. 

Mr Gold couldn’t summon the nerve even to ask the woman out for coffee. 

He was over ten years her senior, the single father of a boy now at university, and while he knew the make-up and costuming gave him a certain sex appeal - banked on it, even - once all of that was gone… 

He stood in front of the mirror and surveyed himself. Once all of that was gone, he was just a plain man the wrong side of forty, short and slight and nothing at all to look at. Belle was single, he knew that much, but it wasn’t as if it mattered. She’d more likely go for Jefferson… in fact, hadn’t she brought him up just this evening?

He was a hopeless old fool, but it was too late to change any of that. Much too late.

He’d been fairly well in love with her since they’d first spoken, two years ago, when she’d cut him down to size with a few choice remarks, only to smile that beatific smile and tell him - tell him, when he was offering her a job - to meet her back there the next day to start her training. He never felt like a decrepit, probably creepy old man when he was with her: it was only once she was gone, and the effect of her smiles wore off, that he knew reality.

She’d likely run for the hills if she knew that he only insisted she remove his make up after the show to have her close. She’d kill him if he told her he’d made it take longer on purpose, in recent months, just to prolong the contact.

And now she’d noticed how needlessly difficult he made it, and it was only a matter of time before he slipped up and she guessed the rest.

He rose from his seat, and finished changing from his costume back into his suit. Well, he thought, it was bound to happen eventually. Now he just had to decide whether to let it fizzle out in disappointment, or end with a bang.

And Rumpelstiltskin had always been a showman.

—

There was a new box of equipment outside the staging area, when Belle arrived at the theatre a week or two later.

Their act was well-honed, a series of different tricks and stunts that were mixed and matched each night, to give a series of different performances. They had fans now, after all, and the same show three times in a row would get dull. 

The banter between them, however, was unscripted. They had various lines they both knew by heart, like their opening spiel on nights when they felt whimsical and were amping up the humour element.

She’d come out in her blue dress and try to open the heavy velvet curtains to start the show.

He’d appear as if from nowhere, stage right, in a puff of purple scented smoke; the audience would gasp. “What are you doing?” - he’d started to purr that line, recently. It made her toes curl, not that she’d ever admit it.

“Opening the curtains,” she’d say, as if it were obvious, “they’re all here, Rumple, it’s time to start the show.”

She’d tug a little harder, and the spotlight would show that the curtains were well and truly nailed to the top beam of the stage. “What did you do?” she’d gasp, “nail them down?”

“Yes,” he’d say, sometimes bewildered, sometimes smug. “Need some help?”

He’d wave his arms in a wide arc, and suddenly the curtains would fall and vanish entirely, giving the illusion of being magically removed. The audience would clap and laugh, and Belle would scold, - “you use magic for everything you do!”

And then… then he said whatever he damn well pleased. Whatever fit the moment. Sometimes an innuendo to make her blush - “you never seem to mind, dearie” - sometimes a comment on the first stunt - “well it’s hardly impressive if the audience can’t see me work for curtain!” 

She didn’t know what she preferred, if she were honest. The innuendo and flirting on stage were wonderful at the time, but it broke her every evening when he stepped off-stage, and Rumpelstiltskin was gone, and she was reminded once again that while his persona might flirt outrageously, it was all for the audience’s benefit. Mr Gold had no real interest in her at all. 

She’d been half in love with him since she was twenty, and he was first getting big in the west end. She’d come to watch him almost every night, entranced by the true magic he could weave with his slim, dexterous hands, inspired to try the same for herself. She was just a college kid, then, with a pack of cards and too many nights to herself, studying while others partied. She’d worked hard to get into King’s College, but even she got bored with the books sometimes.

She’d thought being a librarian would make her happy, but even after she’d got herself a job after university she’d found herself every evening practicing her tricks, and every weekend in Covent Garden, performing her ever-improving act. 

It’d taken her eight years to gather the kind of audience that took up the street, and made people pay attention. She made a pilgrimage to Rumpelstiltskin’s act, wherever he performed, at least once every three months. One day, she swore, she’d be his equal.

When she’d seen him watching her - dark eyes fixed on her although his stance, leaned quietly against the wall, had been casual as anything - it’d been all she could do to keep herself steady, to not ruin her trick. She’d pretended to not see him, to not notice when he started to come and watch her regularly just as she had come to watch him, those years ago. 

She’d never expected him to come to speak to her, or to offer her a job. She’d certainly not expected him to be a quiet, intelligent, reserved man who preferred conservative suits and hated attention. Even worse were his hard-won warm smiles, his refined, dry sense of humour and his soft brown eyes. He was about as far from Rumpelstiltskin the Sorcerer as he could have been, and she saw that more and more every day they spent together. 

He was so much more than a grand facade, and once she’d met his son, and earned the boy’s almost instant approval, his shell had crumbled altogether. He let her in, smiled and laughed and made everything seem brighter and warmer, easy as magic.

That was the day she fell in love with him. 

But, of course, he’d never shown any sign off-stage of feeling anything like the same way for her, so she’d left it be. It was more important to work with him, to be his partner and to learn from him. More than that, he desperately needed a friend he could trust, someone beyond his son who he didn’t have to be on his guard around. And those things were far too important to jeopardise for the sake of her stupid feelings for him. 

“What’s all of this, then?” she asked, when she saw him pulling up beside her. She gestured to the two large crates, and saw Gold raise his eyebrows.

“Oh, we have a new trick,” he said, with a sly smile. “Something special.”

“Well that’s reassuring,” she murmured, and his grin widened. “You gonna show me, then?”

“After tonight’s show,” he promised, “we can’t have it prepared before then, after all.”

Belle nodded: that wasn’t unusual, them working long nights to hone a new part of the act. It was sometimes all the time they got with the theatre quiet, and no one around to see how it was done. Gold was strict on that: magic was a need-to-know area, and only those directly involved in the safety of the thing knew exactly how it was to be executed, and they were all bound by contract.

He smiled, then, and she felt that familiar rush of joy at the sight. It was so wonderful, every day that he smiled like that, to remember that he smiled that way for her alone. To know that she had earned that warmth, even if platonic sweetness was all that it could ever be.

He held the door open for her, and she playfully curtseyed at his chivalry as he followed her inside.

The day went by ridiculously slowly, by Belle’s reckoning. She was so curious as to what was in the box, what he might have cooked up for her this time. Their last new trick had involved his seeming to spin straw into pure gold, as an homage to his twenty professional years under his stage name. It still impressed Belle, even now, how he managed so deftly to swap the straw for the gold between just two fingers, all while operating real, working spinning wheel.

He’d promised to teach her to spin, someday, although with wool rather than straw. She wondered if she could learn something like that with him, something that would surely involve such proximity, without breaking and letting slip how she truly felt about him.

They performed their show as they always did, although Gold’s Rumpelstiltskin seemed more on-edge this evening than usual, his giggles higher and his movements sharper, as if his every muscle were coiled and pulled taught and tense as a bow string. Their grande finale, which involved locking him in a cage with ten Yale locks, mostly locked by the audience themselves, who were free to bring their own locks and to test the bars. Of course, this was all with Belle’s assistance - and therein lay the illusion - so that they would corroborate that he was, indeed, locked in there.

They then rose the cage so it hung high over the stage, in the dome that the former stock exchange proudly touted, and all lights were on him. He would escape, and seem to vanish entirely from view for only a moment before reappearing at Belle’s side, and apparently scaring the life out of her.

It was her favourite of her show-endings, and he knew it. The grin on his face when he reappeared - every night, she didn’t believe he’d manage the risky manoeuvre from faux-cage to stage floor - all excitement and achievement, was worth it every time.

The audience went wild, on their feet, and Belle and Rumpelstiltskin took their bows. 

After they said their goodbyes to the crowd, they did not change out of their costumes. After all, she was no good as an assistant if she could perform her part in leggings but not her full skirts.

The stage was bare when she stepped out onto it, and she saw Gold still in full make up finishing the set up of a large wooden box, which looked like nothing so much as a large, wide, long closet, with the inside walls lined with mirrors.

“Hey,” she said, softly, and he turned with a bright smile.

“Ah, you’re back already!” he twittered, still in character, and she laughed. “Good, good thing, I was about to send out a search party.”

“Hmm,” she nodded, drawing closer - because if he planned to play the part, with those sparkling eyes and that flirtatious purr, then she would play the blushing maid, and see who broke first - and clasping her hands behind her back. “Well, you owe me a lesson. What new trick are we to show our adoring public?”

“Ah,” he tapped her on the nose, and she giggled, charmed. He was always affectionate like this, in a way reserved Mr Gold never was. She loved both halves of him, on and off the stage. Part of her thought it unfair for him to lead her on so, when it wasn’t even for the sake of the show. “This, dearie,” he said, with a grand gesture, “is your greatest performance!”

“Me?” she asked, surprised. True, she was a good magician in her own right, but she wasn’t the centrepiece of the show. It was always surprising - and flattering - when he relegated himself to the sidelines and let her take centre stage. It dawned on her, the one area in which she had more expertise than he, “I’m to escape, then?”

“Clever girl,” he beamed, and produced four sets of handcuffs. “These are the dummies,” he said, carefully, holding the one set, a slightly duller silver than the others that only a professional - or a criminal - would notice, “and these are the real ones, that we’ll let the audience see and test.”

“Alright,” she nodded, watching as he clipped a pair - the dummies - into place on the top bar in the closet, “so what happens then?”

“Simple,” he said, raising one hand dramatically and grinning, “I spin this box around and around, and you break free. The back is identical to the front,” he spun it to show her, and she nodded, “so I show this side, open it and poof,” he fanned out his hands, “the lady vanishes.”

“I then appear sat on top of the box, holding the real handcuffs again, I take it?” she asked, recognising at last the trick. It had been the one she performed that week in Covent Garden, when he watched her, with added mirrors and stagecraft. It was sweet that he remembered. “And mock your attempts to defeat me?”

“Add in a rousing chorus of ‘Anything you can do’, and we’re done!” he teased, and she laughed. Neither of them could sing a note in tune: one drunken karaoke escapade with some of the techies had proven that.

“I don’t need to practice that, though,” she pointed out, “I’m a pro at this trick. I practically invented it. Put it near the start as a warm-up and we’re done.”

“Indulge an old monster,” he pleaded, and she could see Gold’s anxiety behind Rumpelstiltskin’s alacrity. She sighed, and nodded: since when could she deny him anything anyway?

“Fine, I suppose a run-through wouldn’t hurt,” she sighed, and stepped into the box.

She raised her hands, about to sort her own cuffs, when she felt him come up behind her. His warmth radiated through her back, and she shivered unconsciously. His hands slipped up her arms to help her with the cuffs, and her breathing stuttered.

“Where, ah,” Belle tried to sound normal, swallowed hard, “where’s Ruby and Vic? Don’t they need to see the angles and stuff?”

“I don’t know,” he breathed, and she had to be imagining how strained and low his own voice sounded, as if their proximity were affecting him as well. “I suppose they must have taken the night off.”

“Huh,” Belle frowned, distracted but trying to think through a fog of heartbeat and his hands on her wrists and oh lord she could see everything, him almost wrapped around her, in the mirror before them. “That’s weird.”

“Indeed,” he agreed, as if the question had only just occurred to him as well, “perhaps we should call them, and ask?”

“No,” she breathed, and then looked up sharply, realising how that had sounded. “I mean, maybe he finally got up the balls to ask her out. We shouldn’t disturb.”

“Hm,” he hummed, the vibrations sending shivers through her. It wasn’t fair for him to do this, when she was cuffed to a railing and unable to stop him. She’d be fantasising about this for years, she knew, and it was too tempting to just relax into it, and pretend he would kiss her neck next, his hands travelling downward… “Perhaps.”

“You need to leave the cabinet for me to do the trick,” she said, shakily. Their eyes met in the mirror, and she saw how flushed she looked despite the draught in the theatre.

“I do,” he agreed, but still, he didn’t move. For a long moment he simply stood there, poised behind her, touching and holding without a hand being laid upon her. It was torture, and it was heaven, and it was all Belle would ever be allowed, so she memorised every moment, burning the image of the pair of them in the mirror into her mind. 

And then, slowly, with a look of something that was regret and adoration all mixed into one utterly impossible emotion, he stepped back, and out of the cabinet.

She let out a low, shaky breath, and tried to start her practice.

Only for her eyes to glance in the mirror and for her to catch him watching her too closely. That wasn’t his mechanical, technical eye watching her movements. His eyes traced not her fingers on the cuffs but the curve of her back, the round of her rump and the expanse of her legs beneath her long skirts. He didn’t think she was watching. Perhaps he’d looked thus before.

She swallowed, hard, and hoped to God that she wasn’t wrong. If she was, she could likely be out of a job - and a partnership, a friendship, a life she loved - but if she was right… 

“Eli,” she said, softly, and she caught his attention then. She never called him his Christian name, not unless they were talking late into the night, or she was drinking, or he desperately needed her to be more friend than partner. Not unless it was important.

He didn’t say anything, but his eyes met her with such guilt, such sadness… he expected to be sent away. He was as scared as she was.

That decided it. “Come back?” she asked, trying to keep the tremor from her voice. He swallowed, hard, his adam’s apple bobbing and she could see it through his flamboyantly open collar. 

“Why?” he sounded wrecked, and she wished her arms weren’t bound still, that she could hug him. But moving would break the moment, and perhaps this moment was the only chance that they would have. The air itself felt like it was holding its breath as she considered her answer, how to tell him he was welcome without risking a massive mistake.

“Because you want to,” she said, finally. “I think you do, anyway. You look like you do.”

“And you… do you…”

“Yes,” she said, decisively, before she could change her mind. “If you… yes. It’s all I want in the world.”

He stood, rooted to the spot and watching her, for a long moment. And then, finally, he nodded, and with hesitant, quiet steps, he rejoined her in the cabinet. This time, his hands rested lightly on her hips, and his lips by her ear.

“This?” he asked, softly, cautiously. “Is this what you meant?”

Her eyes fluttered closed at his breath on her neck, and she nodded, shakily. 

He leaned down, and pressed a hesitant, warm kiss to the side of her throat. She let out a soft little sigh, and he did it again, a little higher, tracing a little path up to the lobe of her ear. “Keep your eyes closed,” he whispered, and she frowned.

“Why?”

“Because there is a mirror in front of you, dearie,” he said, a little grimly, the lilt back in his voice, high and sing-song, “and it’s better for all concerned if you don’t watch.”

Stubbornly, defiantly, Belle opened her eyes anyway. The sight of them, his skin still painted green-gold and rough, pressed up against her own flushed pinkness, was enough to make her toes curl. He was wrapped around her, one hand slipped around to splay possessively against her belly, the other still firm on her hip. “I’d not worry about that,” she said, a little throatily. “Really.”

He snorted into the side of her neck, and nipped lightly, “Strange girl. I knew there was a reason you kept helping with my make-up.”

She shook her head, and he nibbled her jaw to keep her still. She had to swallow, and pause a moment, so she could trust her voice not to tremble. “That was because… you asked me to. Every night.”

“Would you have stayed close if not?” he asked, teasingly, “Come now, dearie, how else is a monster to lure a maiden to his lair? Even if you do leave when the make-up is all gone.”

She stared at him, eyes boring into hers in the mirror, and he very neatly, very obviously, moved the hand from her hip downward, to pull at her full skirts. She wondered why he kept the lilt, Rumpelstiltskin’s teasing voice, when so much was now revealed. But then, she was drawing on her own persona’s brave outspokenness to get through this, so perhaps it was the same for him. Perhaps this was the only way he could say all that he wanted to.

It did lend courage, to know that he’d wanted her close before now. Her face flushed even redder, blushing deep red, and she bit her lip.

“I’d have stayed if you’d asked me to, if you’d wanted me to.”

“I always wanted you to,” he admitted, “little Belle who smells of roses and sunshine. Who wouldn’t want you close?” another kiss, a dart of tongue laving the neglected side of her throat, and she thought she’d lose her mind soon enough.

His hand on her belly moved upward, to the false stays at the front of her costume, to the zipper hidden beneath. He drew it down, and she gasped, the intention clear. She’d thought he’d let her down, that they’d talk, that perhaps they’d go back to his place or hers, but maybe this was better. Maybe this way they could reach a place that time and doubt and unwise words couldn’t pull them back from.

She was certainly game, if he was.

“Did you want to stay?” he asked, toying the end of the zipper in a manner that was anything but absent.

“Every time,” she breathed, “it killed me to walk away.”

He made a sound, not quite a groan and not quite a sigh, and spoke no more. His face was suddenly, swiftly buried in the side of her neck, inhaling the soft perfume she’d dabbed there hours ago, his arms tightening around her as if he never intended to let go.

She arched her neck to grant better access, and gasped as she felt teeth scrape at her skin, as his free hand finally slipped beneath her costume. 

His fingertips brushed the line of her underwear, not quite slipping beneath, hesitant even now. The warmth of his fingers on her stomach, firm rather than teasing, but somehow still tentative sent her pulse racing, her muscles melting back against his firm body.

“Please,” she whispered, and he nodded, swallowing hard. His hands did not go beneath her underwear, though, nor up to her breasts. Instead, both of his hands slid up her arms, and released the cuffs with a soft little click.

She looked at him sharply in the mirror, but while his eyes met hers there was no retreat hidden there. He looked wrecked, beautiful, tortured, but he did not move away. Belle turned around slowly, so as not to startle her Rumpelstiltskin. He looked so wild, his eyes bright and dark, his lips parted, his breathing shallow. The scaled makeup cast the planes of his face into sharp relief, and she traced the line of his cheekbone with soft fingertips, glad now that her arms were free.

“You let me go,” she whispered, slipping into character without realising it, the notion of having been at his mercy - and willingly, gladly, warmly so - and being set free suddenly monumental. As he’d meant it to be, she suspected. He wanted her to have the choice: he wanted her to stay by her own volition.

So long, so far they’d come from Covent Garden, and he still thought she’d rather be elsewhere. The guise of Rumpelstiltskin was false confidence, and she’d known that from the moment she’d met him as Gold. He was a man so used to not having what he wanted, that he didn’t trust it even when it was breathing, gasping, willing in his arms.

“I did.” He swallowed again, “Belle-“

She cut him off, wanting no more words between them. Words clogged and muddied, made everything complicated. This, this was simple. This was like magic: set up, misdirection, execution. A straight line, him to her, and she’d not let the real world intrude anymore.

She pressed her lips to his, and he needed no more coaxing than that. His mouth opened over hers, and for a moment they were sharing breath, the same breath, before her mouth covered his and they were kissing. She kissed him all the passion of years of flirtation and tension and the love she had nurtured, deep in her soul, for so very long.

She walked them back just a step, so that her back was against the mirror. They parted just a little, lips still joined but her body free, so that she could - ungracefully but enthusiastically - struggle out of her costume and drop it to her feet.

She was ready to wrap herself around him once again and resume their activities, but he felt her bare skin and broke their kiss. He looked down at her, stunned, his eyes moving from her flushed, beaming face and down, his hands shaking a little on her sides when he saw that she was left in only her bra and panties, and those little, lacy things.

She resisted the urge to cover herself, trying to exude the confidence and surety that he lacked. One sign of discomfort and he’d bolt, she knew, and while it was sweet, it was also a problem they’d need to overcome. The last thing she needed was his reverting to the caustic, standoffish bastard shell she’d worked so hard to get past in their first years of partnership. And it would be so easy, she knew, to make that happen.

“Everything okay?” she asked, softly, and she saw a bashful smile curling the corners of his face, oddly adorable set against his gold-green scales.

“More than,” he vowed. His hands left her waist and fluttered in front of him, nervousness warring with passion on his face. She took the initiative, then, and carefully took his wrists in her hands. She guided his palms gently upward, to cover her lace-clad breasts, hoping that that signal was loud and clear. His heavy breaths were matched by her own, as his fingers slowly fanned out, squeezed softly, eliciting the softest of sighs from her parted lips.

“Please,” she whispered again, and he nodded, this time moving closer to her, claiming her mouth with his own in a searing kiss.

Belle’s hands fumbled at his belt as his slid down her sides to cup her behind and encourage her to lean her weight on the mirror, and wrap her legs around his hips. Eventually it was his fingers that managed to get his flies undone and remove the last barrier between them, his mouth buried once again in her neck as his fingers pushed the strip of lace that separated them aside.

She moaned aloud at the feeling of his fingertips against her soaked lips, and she scraped her teeth and her lips against his jaw in a clumsy, openmouthed kiss. 

A small cry was torn from her throat as he pushed against her entrance, fumbling to line them up and finally, finally, he slid inside her, and she pushed her hips down, closer to him, until he was fully sheathed inside her.

His hands slid up to hold her hips, her arms wrapped around his shoulders, as he started - gently, but oh so firmly - to move inside her. She gasped with every slow thrust inside, bucking her hips to meet him each time. They were pressed so close together that her breasts were crushed against his chest, her clit grazing against his pelvis and the remaining fabric of her panties with every downward thrust, and soon her gasps were breathy little cries, her legs tightened like a vice around his waist.

Her head rolled to the side over his shoulder, and she realised with a start that she could see their reflection in the side mirrors, see the rhythm of his strong hips as he pounded into her, see her own near-naked body pressed against his costume, the red silk shirt and leather waistcoat that scraped exquisitely against her nipples when they moved together.

She was enraptured, watching as they made love, while she knew his face was still hidden in the side of her throat, where he left ever more frantic kisses and love-bites, utterly lost in his loving of her.

The pleasure spiralled higher and higher inside her, built by every press of his hot mouth to her bare skin, every deep thrust of his cock deep inside her, every rub of her clit against his pelvis and the sodden lace of her underwear. And she watched it all in the mirror, watched her own face slacken with pleasure, watched his hips judder and lose their rhythm as he drew closer to his own climax, watched everything become motion and heat and love, and her own eyes fall closed as she drew close.

He twisted his hips just so, and hit just the right spot, and she came, hard, lights bursting behind her eyes and every muscle clenching around him. She felt him come just after her, his thrusts erratic as he rode out his orgasm inside her, and finally became still, holding her close against the glass, his hot breaths heavy on her shoulder.

Gold stepped back, at last, enough to slip out of her, and Belle felt a little colder, emptier, at the loss. She straightened her underwear - sodden and ruined now but something - and leaned down to pick up her dress, trying to do so as modestly as possible. 

“Are you… alright?” he asked, his voice wonderfully husky and low, warm reality behind Rumpelstiltskin's twittering mask, and she looked up, startled into meeting his eyes.

“I… of course,” she shook her head, and with it shook off the odd shyness, the coldness, that had overtaken her. He held her gaze, and she saw with her own eyes how he softened, and she with him. “Perfect,” she said, quietly, sincerely, and his smile would have lit the whole theatre, for all its softness, for all its tender warmth.

His hand slipped forward, and pulled up her zipper for her, arranging her dress just so so that it was almost impossible to tell what they’d been doing.

Well, she thought, with a rueful little laugh, were it not for the large green-gold mark on her shoulder where his make-up had rubbed off, or the matching pink patch around his mouth. She saw the moment he saw himself in the mirror, and he laughed with her, after a stunned second. “I hope no one sees us on the way out,” she laughed.

“Agreed,” he nodded, one eyebrow raised, “they’d never shut up about it.”

She didn’t comment on the way out, when his hand slid into hers, his fingers wrapping firmly around hers. They made their way with slightly ungainly haste to the make up rooms, and made sure to lock the doors.

He hadn’t removed much of his costume before, Belle thought with a smile, as she finished locking up and turned to see him already in the chair. It was time to finish what they’d started.


End file.
